The Gourmet Cooking School Cookbook

$15.00

by Dion Lucas with Darlene Geis, Bernard Geis Assoc., second printing, 1964. Oversized hardback with DJ, 366 pages. "Classic recipes, menus and methods as taught in the classes of the Gourmet Cooking School." Each recipe features a shopping list and a preparation tray of ingredients prepared in advance, following the system established in the chef and author's cookery classes in London and New York after WWII.

Lucas, who died in 1971, and is sadly overlooked these days, was an interesting woman. An early (pre-WW II) female Cordon Bleu graduate, she was one of the first to do TV cooking demonstrations in the U.S., on a local New York City station. Of course, Julia Child, with her enormous personality and public television pulpit, overshadowed her sizable contributions. The recipes are not not easy stuff, but well presented.

There are also wonderful anecdotes. She tells us, for example, that as a young woman, working as a chef in a Hamburg hotel in the '30s, one of her customers who ordered Pouissins a la Hambourg Petit, (boned and stuffed squab), was a certain Herr Hitler. You won't get that on the Food Network.